Sweet Smell of Success

Inarguably one of the great American films of the 1950s, Sweet Smell of Success is also one of the meanest, with zingers as pointed as anything in the other great 1950s films about the desire for fame, All About Eve and Sunset Boulevard. Burt Lancaster plays the malevolent newspaper columnist J.J. Hunsecker and Tony Curtis as the press agent desperate for his favor. It is classically noir, with striking black and white cinematography and a plot revolving around corruption and a wronged ingénue. Not to be missed.